American Literature of the 19th Century
I suppose my love of literature in general began specifically with the American literature of the Nineteenth Century. Elementary school encounters with Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe gave a sense of a whole story, a wide and vivid painting of a setting and characters and events. Short stories were taught throughout public school, and the short story was mastered by American writers in the Nineteenth Century. so the best was offered in the big reader anthologies of fifty years ago. I acquired a complete set of Nathaniel Hawthorne and read every volume, including the notebooks. Later I delighted in discovering the “off-canon” writers, particularly Bret Harte and Harriet Beecher Stowe. This page of my usual offerings in the store is not comprehensive, but I am working toward that. I hope it inspires returns to favorites, new discoveries, and rounding out earlier reading.
The Minister's Wooing
The Minister's Wooing
From the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a domestic comedy that examines slavery, Protestant theology, and gender differences in early America.
First published in 1859, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s third novel is set in eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, a community known for its engagement in both religious piety and the slave trade. Mary Scudder lives in a modest farmhouse with her widowed mother an their boarder, Samuel Hopkins, a famous Calvinist theologian who preaches against slavery. Mary is in love with the passionate James Marvyn, but Mary is devout and James is a skeptic, and Mary’s mother opposes the union. James goes to sea, and when he is reportedly drowned, Mary is persuaded to become engaged to Dr. Hopkins.
With colorful characters, including many based on real figures, and a plot that hinges on romance, The Minister’s Wooing combines comedy with regional history to show the convergence of daily life, slavery, and religion in post-Revolutionary New England.